Too little, too much or just right: Injury/illness sensitivity and intentions to drink as a basis for alcohol consumer segmentation

Abstract

Background: Although alcohol is the most socially accepted drug, little is known about the classification of alcohol consumers into clusters influencing drinking outcomes. Past research has demonstrated that injury/illness sensitivity predicts health protecting behaviors. Objectives: The present study explored whether alcohol consumers can be classified based on injury/illness sensitivity and intentions to reduce drinking, and whether the identified clusters exhibited meaningful differences in negative affect and drinking levels. Methods: Four-hundred and eighty-six participants (54.3% male; mean [SD] age = 26.5 [7.2] years) completed online questionnaires between July and October of 2017. Questions were asked pertaining to injury/illness sensitivity, intentions to reduce drinking, negative affect, and heavy drinking behavior. A k-means cluster analysis was performed on illness/injury sensitivity and intentions to reduce drinking scores. We then examined whether clusters varied according to negative affect or drinking variables. Results: The k-means cluster analysis identified four clusters: Insensitive non-internalizers, Insensitive internalizers, Sensitive non-internalizers, and Sensitive internalizers. Sensitive internalizers reported the highest, whereas Insensitive non-internalizers reported the lowest, negative affect. Sensitive internalizers also had the lowest percentage of heavy drinkers. Conclusion/importance: Current findings add to the alcohol literature by indicating that high sensitivity to illnesses/injuries and the internalization of sensitivities via behavior change intentions may provide the best protection against high alcohol consumption levels.

Keywords:

• Illness sensitivity
• injury sensitivity
• drinking intentions
• negative affect
• alcohol consumption

Acknowledgements

At the time this research was conducted, Dr. Al-Hamdani was supported by a Post Doctoral Fellowship from Mitacs Elevate, Ms. Joyce’s graduate studies were supported by a Nova Scotia Gradute Scholarship, a Scotia Scholar Award from the Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation (NSHRF), and a Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), and Dr. Stewart by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Addictions and Mental Health at Dalhousie University.

Notes

1 Prior research has demonstrated a two-factor solution (Carleton, Park, & Asmundson, 2006). Further, we ran a principal components analysis with a varimax rotation to verify the two-factor solution and the results demonstrated a satisfactory solution of two different factors based on a screen plot, minimum eigen value of 1, and a salient loading (>.33) of each item on its expected factor with only one item showing a cross loading on both factors.